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Dear Natalie: Week 24

I’ve hesitated declaring this milestone for a couple weeks, because even though you’ve been able to sit up, you’ve been nowhere close to stable. You could hold yourself in an upright position by tightly gripping our fingers with your hands, but if we let go it only took a glance in any direction but forward to send you toppling over. Even then, it was questionable. Your not-yet developed core strength just wasn’t enough to hold you up, so you’d invariably begin a slow folding forward, your forehead steadily lowering until your feet were in your mouth.

You still considered that a win, but it doesn’t really count as “sitting.”

One day this week you were sitting on the floor, bobbing back and forth like a drunk little candlepin, continually overcorrecting and eventually knocking yourself over. And the next day, you had it all figured out. You were remarkably stable and sturdy and even able to reach out and grab toys on either side of you without falling over.

Congratulations, you’re a Weeble.

When you do inevitably fall over (it happens to the best of us) you’re incredibly chill about it. So far the worst that we’ve seen is that your legs kick frantically like an overturned bug before we swoop in and right you. No tears, though — just an evident shock that you had been upright and then suddenly, you were not. You carry on attempting to stuff every toy within reach into your mouth as if nothing has happened.

I can’t get over how old you look with this particular development. Now that you’re sitting, you look like you could get up and toddle away at any moment. I am in absolutely no rush for that milestone, though – it’s so nice to know that for now, at least, you will stay where I put you.